N.Y. Daily News runs online petition calling for assault weapons ban

Launched in the wake of last week’s deadly school shootings in Newtown, Conn., the petition urges Congress to “immediately ban all assault weapons and high-capacity magazines” and pass new gun-control measures.

"Thirty-four Americans are killed every day by firearms,” the petition, which also ran in the print edition of the Daily News, reads. “The total killed in just six months is equal to all American combat deaths over the entire length of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”

A Daily News spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But it was an unusual move for a newspaper, which tends to leave high-profile advocacy to its editorial page.

The petition has been linked on the home page of the paper’s website. It is also being included as a link in most of the paper’s coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, in which Adam Lanza, 20, shot and killed 20 children and seven adults before killing himself. The victims include his mother, Nancy Lanza, whom he shot at their home before the rampage.